Personal augmentation: keeping up with the times Options

[Wanderer]

Well, taking a second thought on the SR4 cyberware/bioware augmentation rules, I realize that from an OOC point of view, the game is finally evolving away from its hard-core '80s "chrome" cyberpunk aesthetic and embracing some of the '90s postcyberpunk/transhumanist "genetic engineering" one, and from an IC POV, it seems like the setting shows a healthy technological evolution drive that mirrors RL advances. I mean the fact that traditional chrome cyberware appears posed to soon go the way of the dodo and the horse-buggy: even now in the 2070s, bioware is already more essence-friendly, can do almost everything cyberware does (except senseware and datajacks), has (likely) less maintenance requirements with self-repair abilities, and is much more subtle (no likelihood of being spotted by cyberware detectors). The only residual advantage of cyberware is price. Moreover, most of the functions where cyberware cannot be substituted by biological augmentations, can generally be substituted by external miniaturized gadgets (e.g. contact lenses, earbuds, electrodes), if one does not bother with the remote possibility of being stripped of.

This to mean that even now, I see cyberware as a definitely obsolete, residual technology that characters should be moved to use only by entry-level budget and artificial availability limitations (in the case that one even bothers to heed the character creation 'ware availiability thresholds; I don't. Budget limits are more than enough for game balance concerns). It's not something that I expect successful corporate operatives and runners to have or keep in the long term. Apart from money, I cannot see any IC reason why a character should choose or keep cyberware over bioware, when the biological alternative is available. The days of chrome cyberlimbs are numbered...

Consequences for the game setting: apart from aesthetic ones: much less people wearing obvious cyberware in the streets, which makes for a less alienating social environment, which might not be a bad thing, as it lets the game setting keep pace with source fiction, it makes augmented people much more subtle: in the 2070s, if a normal-looking person suddenly shows superhuman strength or speed, is he an adept or augmented with bioware ? Moreover, in all likelihood, bioware is much less burdensome to the psyche, so 'ware alienation is less of a personal and social concern. Last but not leats, bioware is less burdensome to essence and less socially alienating, so it is more likely that people other than combat, infiltration, or matrix specialists may be interested in having it. More likelihood of hybridization between magic and bioware, for one thing.